Page 28 of In an Absent Dream

“The Market doesn’thaveto do anything,” corrected her father. “The Market is not the friend you think it is. If it were, why would it prey on children, instead of letting us keep coming into adulthood? It wants the young. It wants the malleable. If it wants you, it’s because it sees something in you that it can use. Your life is the biggest bargaining chip you have. Before you choose where to spend it, be sure you understand what you’re getting in return.”

For a moment, it looked like he was going to continue. Instead, he caught his breath, held up his hand, and said, “If you’ll excuse me, I took today off, but I still have to finish some paperwork before we go shopping. You’ll need new clothes before you can begin your classes.”

“What about the exam?”

“I’ll test you tonight,” he said, and turned back to his desk.

Understanding a dismissal when she saw one, Lundy walked away. She closed the door behind herself.

***

IT WOULDhave been easy, standing alone in the front room, to keep going. To walk to the front door, open it, and head down the sidewalk toward the nearest copse of trees. It would have beeneasyto announce her sureness to the air and wait for the door to appear. Lundy bit her lip, looking at the window. Not many people knew she was back. It would be relatively easy to cover up another disappearance. The final disappearance. This time, she was going for good.

The door opened. “Katherine?”

Lundy jumped, unable to stop herself. Diana looked at her solemnly, the doorknob still in her hand.

“You’re thinking about leaving again, aren’t you?” she asked. “Where do you go? Why do you keep leaving me behind?”

Because if you were meant to find the Market, the Market would have found you,Lundy thought. Aloud, she said, “A place that’s not like this. D . . . Dad made me promise not to talk about it.” The word was slippery on her tongue. She hadn’t used it in so long. On the few occasions when she’d needed to discuss him in the Market, he had been “my father.” Nothing more personal.

“He doesn’t like it when people ask where you are,” admitted Diana. “I don’t like it either. It always makes me remember that you’re not here with me. Are you hungry? I usually make a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich when I get home. Mom says they’ll rot my teeth, but she’s still at work, so I don’t care.”

“Mom got a job?”

“After you went to boarding school. I was in kindergarten, and she said it would ‘take the edge off’ being alone in the house all day.” Diana shrugged. “She’s the secretary at the power plant. She likes it okay, or says she does, and she likes being able to buy the name brand stuff at the grocery store. Did you want a sandwich?”

“Sure,” said Lundy hollowly. She trailed Diana to the kitchen, watching as the familiar stranger who was her sister began pulling things out of cupboards. Everything was so different now, and so much of it looked the same, which somehow made the differences even worse. She couldn’t trust where her memory put things. Either they had been moved, or she had misremembered, but either way, this might as well have been her first time in this house.

She realized she was calculating the value of the knife Diana used to spread the peanut butter on the bread and turned her face away, ashamed. These things weren’t hers. She had come back to steal once, when she’d been younger and less equipped to understand that a thing being in her house didn’t mean she had a right to it. This time, she had come back to say goodbye. Fair value for robbing this family of a daughter was a year, nothing more. Certainly not a year and all the silverware.

“Do they have peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches where you’ve been?” asked Diana casually.

Lundy raised her eyebrows. “You’re trying to trick me into telling you.”

“Well, yeah.” Diana slapped creamy goo onto the right sides of two pieces of white bread. “I don’t like secrets. Everything’s been secrets, all the time, since you disappeared. Where’s Katherine, where’d she go, did she run away or was she kidnapped, oh she’s back, where’s she been, now she’s off to boarding school, why, why,why?” She stabbed the knife back into the jar with more force than strictly necessary. “I guess it’s good, since I was so small when you went, and this way I never got to forget you. But it’s stupid. We’re a family. I should have been allowed to know stuff. I should be allowednow.”

Lundy looked at her, seeing the similarities between them, seeing the differences. Diana was sharper than she’d been at that age, a knife poised to slice into the world and keep slicing until it gave her what she needed. Lundy had always been more of a needle, careful and precise, following the lines laid out by the rules, never stepping over them. Perhaps that was why the Market had come for her, and not for her sister. Perhaps it had known it could never give Diana fair value.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t. I promised.”

“Like you promised to stay for a year?” Diana dropped the knife and folded the pieces of bread viciously in half, pressing the marshmallow hard against the peanut butter. “That’snothing. You won’t see me get to high school, or be there to talk to me about boys, ornothing. You might as well not have come back at all if you’re only going to come back for a year.”

“It’s what I have,” said Lundy weakly.

“No, it’s not.” Diana turned, thrusting one of the folded-over sandwiches at her like an accusation. Lundy took it. “You have your whole life. You have my whole life. Two whole lives that we could spend being sisters, and you’re going to give me a year. That’s not fair.”

“You don’t really know me.”

“You’ve neverletme.” Diana glared. “A year isn’t anything.”

“Tell that to the calendar,” said Lundy. The sandwich was heavy in her hand, weighted down with sweetness. “Are we going to spend the whole year fighting? Is that what’s going to make it okay for you to let me go?”

“I don’t want to.” Diana nibbled on the edge of her sandwich. “I’d rather be sisters.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Diana shrugged. “I’ve never had one before.”

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